I have learnt many things over these past years. I have learnt much in contemplating the world of pleasure, and recognizing its fragile beauty. But I now feel it is time for me to progress to other things. Sensei, it is my belief that in such troubled times as these, artists must learn to value something more tangible than those pleasurable things that disappear with the morning light. It is not necessary that artists always occupy a decadent and enclosed world. My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.
Quoting Masuji Ono, from An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
We live in a floating world, which is to say a decadent subjective world of pleasure and inwardness. We can no longer believe in something eternal, objective and true; we are renouncing our Hellenic-Christian past and are currently floating gently down the stream towards the rapids. This corrosion affects all, but especially the elites who created it. They have torn the idols down, but failed to replace them with anything other than a mocking posture as the culture descends into tribalism; our art reflects this.
I would gladly be proven wrong; it should be simple enough. Point to composer or painter who is the equal of major artists of the past. Where is the new Chopin or Cezanne? Phillip Glass or Andy Warhol do not come close–they only mock. This is not to say post-modern or contemporary artists are without merit of course. They can be intellectually interesting, but rarely awe-inspiring because they don’t believe in awe-inspiring. To be in awe is to understand that there are great things afoot in the world that are not captured by the mind; they are beyond reason.
I’ve heard critics wax eloquently about the “beauty” of dissonance or transgressive paintings, but these are not beauty, they are negations of virtually everything except negation, and that disheartens.
There are exceptions of course. Marilynne Robinson’s prose can rise to the beauty of poetry and she grapples with serious and very human issues. But even in greatness, today’s genius often fails because it aims so low. Compare Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian to see the difference between aiming high and aiming low; Blood Meridian is great fiction, but it is the art of negation.
Blog No. 87: We Are Artists in a Floating World
I have learnt many things over these past years. I have learnt much in contemplating the world of pleasure, and recognizing its fragile beauty. But I now feel it is time for me to progress to other things. Sensei, it is my belief that in such troubled times as these, artists must learn to value something more tangible than those pleasurable things that disappear with the morning light. It is not necessary that artists always occupy a decadent and enclosed world. My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.
Quoting Masuji Ono, from An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
We live in a floating world, which is to say a decadent subjective world of pleasure and inwardness. We can no longer believe in something eternal, objective and true; we are renouncing our Hellenic-Christian past and are currently floating gently down the stream towards the rapids. This corrosion affects all, but especially the elites who created it. They have torn the idols down, but failed to replace them with anything other than a mocking posture as the culture descends into tribalism; our art reflects this.
I would gladly be proven wrong; it should be simple enough. Point to composer or painter who is the equal of major artists of the past. Where is the new Chopin or Cezanne? Phillip Glass or Andy Warhol do not come close–they only mock. This is not to say post-modern or contemporary artists are without merit of course. They can be intellectually interesting, but rarely awe-inspiring because they don’t believe in awe-inspiring. To be in awe is to understand that there are great things afoot in the world that are not captured by the mind; they are beyond reason.
I’ve heard critics wax eloquently about the “beauty” of dissonance or transgressive paintings, but these are not beauty, they are negations of virtually everything except negation, and that disheartens.
There are exceptions of course. Marilynne Robinson’s prose can rise to the beauty of poetry and she grapples with serious and very human issues. But even in greatness, today’s genius often fails because it aims so low. Compare Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian to see the difference between aiming high and aiming low; Blood Meridian is great fiction, but it is the art of negation.